After several days of technological dissonance, I've finally gained access to our blog. The logistical reasons for said dissonance are far too tedious to recount here, so I'll get right to it: I've seen 10 films over the last 60 hours, some good, some OK and none less than interesting.

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There’s no denying that Terry Gilliam has a vast imagination. But is that a good thing for his films and those who have to watch them?

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Will Ferrell takes a break from his usual comic shenanigans this week to star writer/director Dan Rush's feature debut, Everything Must Go, an adaptation of a Raymond Carver short story. Ferrell in a Carver story, a story in which Ferrell's character is a listless, downtrodden “functioning alcoholic” with straying loins? Apparently. And, according to tt stern-enzi's positive review, apparently he does it well.

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Harmony Korine is a polarizing filmmaker. One either finds his films — Gummo (1997), Julien Donkey Boy (1999) and Mister Lonely (2007) — intriguing pieces of art or complete rubbish, the work of a jerk-off provocateur who represents the “end of cinema.”

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The 82nd Academy Awards telecast is Sunday night. Will you be watching?

Yes, I will again succumb to its guilty pleasures, no doubt groaning every 10 minutes or so at the lavish, self-important nature of it all (please don’t let James Cameron win — the only thing worse than his creepy, flowing gray hair is the inevitably pompous speech that will spill from his lips if Avatar wins him a Best Director or Best Picture Oscar, which it likely will).

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What's up with all the 1980s love currently spilling out of multiplexes?

Sure, Hollywood and marketers of all sorts have long mined nostalgia as a powerful enticement tool in the marketplace. But is 20 years enough time to generate sufficient yearning for a period whose mainstream culture is best represented by the rise of stupid action movies and/or creatively bankrupt sequels (see the career of Sylvester Stallone for examples of both), acutely disposable Pop music (see everything from Hair Metal to Milli Vanilli), ludicrous clothes (see Miami Vice) and the presence of a two-term president whose nefarious policies laid the groundwork for our current economic meltdown?

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Back in August of last year, Paramount Pictures announced that it was moving Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, the anticipated follow-up to the director’s Oscar-winning The Departed, from an Oct. 2 release date to February 2010. The move was perplexing for a variety of reasons, the most obvious of which was the presence of an Oscar-bait director like Scorsese and an equally lauded A-list actor like Leonardo DiCaprio. Such a shift — especially one that moves a film from the fall awards season to the Land of Misfit Movies known as February — is typically a sign that it’s expected to disappoint for one reason or another.

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In 2008 there was Definitely, Maybe. Last year, there were Confessions of a Shopoholic. And now, with only six days left before Valentine’s Day is actually upon us, a movie baring the same name is set to hit theaters. 

Valentine’s Day, this year’s most blatant bid for romantically charged girls to drag their boyfriends down to the theater, and spend gobs of money to found out whether or not Ashton Kutcher, Julia Roberts, and a fistful of other stars will live happily ever after. For anyone with a remotely decent sense of cinematic taste, this would be something to avoid. And yet, in the deep recesses of my otherwise logical brain, there lives a tiny little blob of girly power that screams, “Go see this movie!”

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In an effort to be as informative as possible to Tristate cinema geeks of every genre, political persuasion and religious affiliation, I thought I'd alert you to the coming presence of a movie that some have called “excellent,” “very worthwhile” and “absolutely dynamic.”

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The Sundance Film Festival announced its 2011 lineup today. The festival, which invades the small ski-resort town of Park City, Utah, Jan. 20-30, will include 115 films from 28 different countries. Befitting a fest known for its nurturing of fresh talent (40 of the 115 are from first-time filmmakers), the 32 films in the U.S. Dramatic and Documentary (16 in each category) include a bunch of new names as well as a few familiar faces.

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